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But are there any discreet graphics options? Asus had a very good version of the Zenbook Prime that had NVidia graphics as an option, that is pretty much the only feature not discussed on this ultrabook...Reply

When my current laptop dies I want a laptop made for Linux/Ubuntu. Currently that means the Dell Sputnik laptop because System76' designers have no taste. Give this thing proper Linux driver support and I'll definitely consider it.Reply

Love my job, since I've been bringing in $5600… I sit at home, music playing while I work in front of my new iMac that I got now that I'm making it online.(Click Home information)http://goo.gl/DA52JReply

Looks like they spent a ton of time on the industrial design. Oh wait....

This is like fodder for Apple, c'mon Toshiba. Everything from the keyboard layout, the hinge, to the wedge shape is ripped straight off a MBA. At least TRY to innovate a little on that front and avoid a lawsuit, sheesh.Reply

Seriously, you take a closer look. There's page up/down keys on the Toshiba where there's none on the Apple, key size/spacing differ, and all the similarities essentially boil down to the QWERTY nature.Reply

Intel HD 4000 graphics (the ULV version that is) concerns me at that resolution. Given the framerate troubles the Retina 13 inch macbook pro has just in basic applications, I'm a bit concerned about general performance on the new KIRAbook. On top of that, the Retina MBP 13" uses a full power i5-3210M (GPU clock 650 to 1100MHz), while the KIRA uses a ULV part (GPU clock idles at 350MHz).

The point I'm making is that if the Retina 13" MBP has performance problems, this just might be worse. I still do appreciate the attempt at higher resolutions though!Reply

The source of the Retina MBP 13" performance problems is the OS, not the GPU. I'd thought this to be the case considering that Intel's HD 4000 supports 4k display resolutions, but it's easy enough to test! Hooked my media computer with an i5-3570k using the integrated graphics up to my U2713HM by displayport and there are no visible issues in Windows 7. Oh, and the GPU-z sensor tab is reporting that the GPU core clock stays at the 350MHz floor.Reply

A lot of the performance problems is actually bad applications. For example, Google Chrome has very poor scrolling performance at high zoom levels, which is effectively what HiDPI mode is. Both Safari and Firefox are much better, but many people automatically assume Chrome is the fastest when it is not.Reply

About a year ago I built a System with a Sandy Bridge Celeron with HD2000 graphic as an inexpensive home office & media player box for a friend of mine going to college. For the installation part, and just to test it a little, I had it connected to my own 2560x1600 main screen and the 900x1600 secondary screen on my desktop. There was absolutely no framerate troubles on this combined 3460x1600 desktop in anything I have tested it with, be it surfing the internet, watching Blueray-Movies, viewing PDF-Documents with loads of vector-graphics, working on large word-documents, you name it.

Of course it would fail horribly at playing games or as a CAD-Station, but for a very large part of usage scenarios, HD2000 is fine, and HD4000 is more than enough.Reply

I also don't understand the concern with the IGP. The last two retina iPads have lots of pixels that are driven by a SOC with a lower TDP than a Core i5. It's all about bandwidth, and dual channel DDR 1600 is quite sufficient in that regard. I wouldn't expect gaming at native res, but Windows will run just fine.Reply

The resolution doesn't choke up that IGP, they can be a lot weaker than the HD4000 and run that resolution. The problem with the Retina models was the additional scaling they need for the retina tech, it has to render at two different resolutions then downscale etc. Reply

I've driven a 2560x1600 monitor with no issues on my X230 with an Intel HD 3000 graphics. Heck, even my old first-gen i5 EliteBook 2740p drove that monitor without any framerate issues. Maybe Mac OS just doesn't work well with Intel graphics and high resolution screens?Reply

I know I am going against the prevailing sentiment, but on a 13 inch screen, do you really need more than 1080p? My work laptop is a 15in with a 1080p screen, and even on a screen that large text is somewhat difficult to read. I do a lot of spreadsheet work, and I would love to have higher resolution on a large monitor, but on a 13 inch screen, I am not so sure.Reply

The point of "retina" screens is not to make things smaller, but to make them sharper. If developers got their heads out of their arses and actually made everything compliant with resolution-independent DPI settings 10 years ago (when it first started to become obvious we weren't really moving anywhere on resolution) we wouldn't be having this problem now.Reply

With the nightmares I've had with Toshiba equipment at work recently, and a personal history that's even worse, I wouldn't touch any Toshiba product with a ten foot pole. If they could get their reliability (over a 3% initial and 15% over 3 year failure rate on enterprise level hard drives, really?!?) and service up to at least industry average levels, I might consider them, but as they are now, no way in heck.Reply

I am really pleased a new manufacturer has come out with some laptops with decent spec. I would say the rez is somewhat too high, but I'd rather they erred on the high side!

This looks like a potentially great laptop, but as someone else said, I'd wait for a while to see what problems get reported by early adopters.

I still have a Tecra M9 (nvidia, core2duo, 6GB ram) still going strong five years on, and I know some other people who've been very satisfied with their Tosh laptops. OTOH, I know other people whose Tosh's were not particularly satisfactory.I learned my lesson buying a Sony ultraportable and being unable to get a replacement fan for it (Sony refused to sell the fan, and wanted $270 just to look at it), so I would also want to be sure that Toshiba will not try and milk their customers over support and maintenance. This is why I bought a Dell Latitude E6420 last year - not glamorous, but solid and easy and cheap to repair.Reply

this is awesome hardware but how the heck are you supposed to use that high of DPI in windows? the only thing it will work with is the metro apps since those are designed for high DPI natively... but desktop? yeah right.

Scaling was working quiet well in Windows XP too, I've been using the 120DPI setting on my 30" screen for almost a decade now. Hardly any pieces of "work" related software had problems with it, but quiet a few games did.

Also, I've never owned a Retina-Device myself, but wasn't the mac OS solution just to switch software between the original solution or a 2-screen-pixel-per-software-pixel scaling, rather than allowing a defined scaling?Reply

It's bad enough figuring out the difference between HD, FullHD, TrueHD, HD+, but now they want us to remember the difference between qHD (quarter HD aka 960x540) and QHD (quad HD aka 2560x1440 also sometimes referred to as 2K?). As if the people who can't figure out the difference between MB and Mb will be able to properly differentiate between qHD and QHD.